Maryland GP petitioner arrested

In a post at Ballot Access News, Richard Winger points to a story by Larry Carson which offers details of the arrest of professional petitioner Andy Jacobs as he attempted to gather signatures to put the Green Party on Maryland’s ballot.

The Baltimore Sun article quotes Brian Bittner, chair of the Maryland Green Party and national party office manager, expressing frustration and dismay at Maryland’s extreme petitioning laws.

Bittner took issue with being required by state law to collect signatures, then encountering resistance from public employees. “Not only are we required to do it, but we can’t do it here” seems to be a contradictory message, he said.

Green Party Watch News Network

A network of Green activists reporting on Green Party candidates, chapters, committees and issues using Green Party Watch, social networks, radio and TV to carry news of the Green Party before the American people

9 Comments

In a message today, fellow professional petitioner and past GPW writer Paulie, said that Jacobs was petitioning for both the Green and Libertarian Party, and that Jacobs is an LP activist. Paulie intends to write about this and other similar events at Independent Political Report.

To be clear, Paulie is still a contributor, and his posts are most welcome. Like me, Paulie hasn’t posted here for some time, so I made the mistake of assuming. We look forward with anticipation to any future articles he may post here.

That really deserves its own separate discussion, but here is my first comment on it, which may be worth reproducing here…although it may be better suited in a different thread.

“this monolith of an organization,”

A lot of people have this image of alt parties as large organizations. They are not.

Almost all local affiliates consist of a very small handful of people who put in what free time they can outside of work, family, and other hobbies, in between periods of being burned out and dejected from what often feels like a futile and endless struggle. That is, where they exist at all. In many places they simply don’t exist or exist in name only.

A very tiny handful of people around the country do this on anything like a full time basis, and they are not necessarily very good at what they do – they just happen to be the very few that are both willing and able. They make do with very little in the way of resources, materials or help.

And yes, lots of old websites are all over the web. Filling out a form and not having anyone respond? Website looks out of date? There’s a good chance it is. Chances are better than even that the person or small group that created the site moved on a long time ago. Or, maybe they paid someone to make a site that had features which they don’t know how to use.

Mr. Giambrone should stop waiting for someone else to give him marching orders and assume he is the tactical leader in his area until he finds like minded people through networking – they always pop up – and then they can begin to divide tasks.

He says he lives in California, and expects someone to contact him because he registered to vote with their party. Over 100,000 people have done that, and many of them are also just waiting to be contacted as well. Who does he think has the time to make all those contacts? If he can get a list of registered voters in his county (or smaller area if it’s a large county) he can start contacting them.

If not, maybe he can canvass his neighborhood, or find like minded people through local meetings on issue coalitions or through the web or by running for office.

The sad truth is that the big monolith of an organization that many people expect just does not exist. It has to be built from the ground up, tended, and often times rebuilt by the very few people who are willing to do it against overwhelming odds.